Quote Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh View Post
The aerial bombardment of Germany was specifically designed to kill as many Germans as possible. We didn't think it would break their will to resist, we wanted them to die. If we killed enough of them and broke or disrupted enough of their infrastructure, then maybe they wouldn't be able to fight so effectively. We were every bit the coterie of heartless murderers they were and have no right to take a moral high ground approach on anything aside from the Holocaust. We also did it a heck of a lot better than they did and killed scads more of them then they did us.

On the other hand, we didn't start the killing -- they did. We were not the first to expressly target civilians in that war -- they were. What we did was classic tit-for-tat, a system of behaviorial response that has worked effectively for a few millenia. So if you accept reciprocity as a valid response, then you shouldn't have a problem with what happened. If you don't then you always will. You burden either way.
No, I'm afraid I must disagree with all this, except for the bit pointing out cause and effect.


What of the allied bombings and destruction of Caen, Le Havre, Strasbourg? Were they intended to kill as many civilians as possible, or did they serve a military purpose? Perhaps the world forgets that most of the fighting did not take place in Germany and Japan, that citizens in other countries were bombed too, not just by Axis, but by the allies. This is what happens with total war.

It is not just the Holocaust. What of the destruction of Poland? The scorched earth tactic by the advancing German army in the Soviet Union? The slave camps, the slave labour. The million other crimes?

We did not kill as many of them as they killed of ours. The total number of Axis civilian deaths is some 1.5 to 2.5 million. The total number of Allied civilian deaths is some 30-40 million.